Take Action: Chevron’s Board Must Stand for Human Rights

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Yesterday we launched our newest action alert. We are communication directly to Chevron’s Board Members. In CEO John Watson’s first 5 months he as refused to do what is right and clean up Chevron's mess in Ecuador. It’s now time for Chevron’s Board of Directors to take up their responsibility and address their corporation’s lack of accountability and action in Ecuador.
[caption id="attachment_708" align="alignnone" width="553" caption="1) Linnet F. Deily, 2) Robert E. Denham, 3) Robert J. Eaton, 4) Sam A. Nunn, 5) Ronald D. Sugar, 6) Kevin W. Sharer, 7) Samuel H. Armacost, 8)Charles R. Shoemate, 9 ) John G. Stumpf, 10) Enrique Hernandez Jr., 11) Carl Ware, 12) Donald B. Rice, 13) Chuck Hagel, 14) Franklyn G. Jenifer"][/caption]
On May 26th Chevron will be holding their annual shareholder meeting, and bringing their entire board together. Some board members have served on Chevron’s board for many years and are likely very familiar with Chevron’s talking points. While others like former US Senator Chuck Hagel (#13) , and Wells Fargo CEO John G. Stumpf (#9) have just been named to the board and likely have very little if any familiarity with the pollution in Ecuador left behind by Chevron. You can help and make sure that Ecuador is on all of their minds and front and center at this years shareholder meeting.
Please take action and lend your voice in asking Chevron’s Board of Directors to respect human rights and tell CEO John Watson to do the right thing and resolve the ongoing human rights and environmental tragedy in the Amazon.

Dear Board Member,
As a Chevron board member, it is critical for you to understand a serious challenge facing your company: the environmental disaster in the Ecuadorean Amazon. You have a responsibility, as well as a powerful opportunity, to address this issue during the upcoming shareholder meeting in Houston.
You may have heard about the tragedy in Ecuador, recently the subject of the critically acclaimed documentary CRUDE. Over the course of twenty-six years of oil drilling in Ecuador's Amazon, more than 18 billion gallons of toxic sludge were deliberately dumped into the rainforest, leaving local people a legacy of cancers, miscarriages and birth defects that continues today.
Since John Watson took helm at Chevron on January 1st, more than 325,000 people from 150 countries have signed a petition calling on Chevron to resolve the massive environmental and public health crisis in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador. I trust and hope that you are aware of the demands of this growing global movement. Environmental and social responsibility is becoming a core element of corporate viability.
You are in an influential position to move this issue forward and I hope you will do so in the coming months. When you see Chevron CEO John Watson on May 26th tell him to do the right thing and resolve the ongoing human rights and environmental tragedy in the Amazon.
Thank you,

[caption id="attachment_738" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="A man checks a waste pit filled with crude oil left by Texaco (now Chevron) drilling operations years earlier lies in a jungle clearing near the Amazonian town of Shushufindi, Ecuador 2003. Photo by Lou Dematteis"][/caption]

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